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Mentoring May Increase Ranks
Of Women in Top Medical Jobs

By

Kris Maher Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

Updated Oct. 21, 2003 12:01 a.m. ET

In 1998, Hilit Mechaber joined the faculty of the University of Miami School of Medicine, in Miami, as an assistant professor of clinical medicine. Two years later, when she became pregnant, she decided to reduce her hours to spend more time with her family, giving up her benefits and full-time faculty title.

Dr. Mechaber, who is 32 years old, still has a long-term goal of advancing into a leadership position at the university. But she expects an uphill battle. "It's challenging enough to be accepted as a valued faculty member that works less than full time, let alone be considered for administrative and leadership roles," she says.

Dr. Mechaber's dilemma touches on some of the challenges still facing women who choose demanding careers like medicine. For all the gains women have made in education and getting hired in many fields in recent decades, they still face special obstacles on the way to the top, both professional and personal.

The numbers demonstrate the problem. This fall, 49% of students who entered medical school were women, according to the American Association of Medical Colleges, a Washington member association of the 126 U.S. schools that grant the M.D. degree. At many schools, well over half of the students who ultimately graduate are women.

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Yet a much smaller percentage of women reach top-ranking positions in academia, health care and corporations. Only about 13% of full professors at medical schools are women, for example, while only 7% of deans are. Women lag behind similarly in medical-related corporate jobs. A study last year by Catalyst, a women's research and advocacy group in New York, found that just 16% of corporate officers at the 10 big U.S. pharmaceuticals companies are women.

"Most people say there haven't been as many women in the pipeline, but that clearly is not the case," says Margaret Kripke, executive vice president and chief medical officer at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston. "The pipeline is leaking women."

There is no one simple reason why more women aren't rising to top positions. Suggested reasons range from subtle discrimination to the difficulty of balancing a time-consuming career and family responsibilities.

But many women believe that one way to help is to increase mentoring and networking opportunities. In 2000, Barri Blauvelt, president and chief executive of Innovara, a consulting company based in Amherst, Mass., founded Women in High Places, a network of 200 high-ranking women in medical-related positions in academia and the private sector. This year, Ms. Blauvelt launched a mentoring program under which promising young women are being paired with both men and women who have been successful in academia and at corporations. The formal mentoring lasts for four months and comes with a $1,500 award. So far the group has identified 10 women for awards.

In another program, about 350 women have participated in a yearlong fellowship run by Executive Leadership in Academic Medicine, part of the Institute for Women's Health and Leadership at Drexel University College of Medicine in Philadelphia.

Rosalyn Richman, co-director of the program, notes that about 20 women who passed through the program are now deans at medical and dental schools in North America. "At this point the number and percentage of women deans at these schools is still appallingly small," she says. "It is clearly not a matter of waiting to get them through the pipeline."

Some companies have also established such programs. Chicago-based
Abbott Laboratories
launched a mentoring and networking program called Women's Leadership Initiative in December 2001. The company also asks that 50% of candidates presented by search firms be women and 25% be diversity candidates.

In the past five years, Abbott has increased the number of women in director-level management positions and above by 39%, according to Sharon Larkin, divisional vice president of human resources, programs and business integration. So far, 3,000 women employees have participated. "We're not where we want to be, but we're certainly moving in the right direction," Ms. Larkin says.